Adobe ended official support for Magento 1 on June 30, 2020. Nearly six years have passed. Some merchants migrated immediately, some migrated in the two years following, some are still on Magento 1 today and treating the situation as deferred maintenance. The honest answer is that deferred maintenance is no longer the right frame; running Magento 1 in 2026 is an active business risk that compounds every quarter the migration gets pushed.
The risks are not theoretical. Specific CVEs have been published with active exploit code, specific merchants have been breached, specific compliance regimes have made running on EOL software increasingly difficult to defend. Bemeir’s Magento team still works with merchants who are on Magento 1, and the conversations are urgent in a way they were not three years ago. Here is the actual state of the legacy platform in 2026 and what the realistic options look like.
What “EOL” actually meant
When Adobe ended Magento 1 support, several things stopped at the same time:
Official security patches. Magento Inc. stopped releasing security updates for the platform. Vulnerabilities discovered after June 2020 have no official patch. New vulnerabilities continue to be discovered.
Quality and feature patches. Bug fixes, performance improvements, and feature backports stopped. Whatever Magento 1 was on June 30, 2020 is what it is today.
Official extension marketplace support. Adobe’s marketplace stopped listing Magento 1 extensions and stopped certifying new ones. Most major extension vendors have followed suit, ending Magento 1 support on their own products.
Compatibility with modern PHP versions. Magento 1 was built on PHP 5.4-5.6 era assumptions. As PHP versions advanced (7.4, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2), keeping Magento 1 running on supported PHP versions has required increasing levels of patching, often by third-party maintainers.
Compatibility with modern infrastructure. Modern hosting environments increasingly default to configurations Magento 1 was not built for. Running Magento 1 on current AWS, GCP, or Azure default offerings often requires custom configuration.
The platform did not stop working on June 30, 2020. It started slowly diverging from the standards everything else in the merchant’s stack was built to.
The risks that have accumulated in six years
Six categories of risk have grown materially since EOL. Each one is worse today than it was at EOL.
Security vulnerabilities without official patches. Multiple Magento 1 vulnerabilities have been discovered and exploited since EOL. The most prominent: the Sansec research on Magento 1 exploitation has tracked specific attack patterns targeting EOL Magento 1 stores. Common attacks include credit card skimmer injection (the “Magecart” attack family), administrative credential theft, and database extraction. Without official patches, merchants are dependent on third-party patches of uneven quality and timing.
PCI DSS compliance pressure. PCI DSS requires merchants to maintain systems with current security patches. The PCI Security Standards Council guidance on EOL software makes clear that running EOL software is acceptable only with compensating controls that are increasingly difficult to defend during a QSA assessment. Some payment processors have started declining to renew merchant agreements for Magento 1 stores; others have begun charging higher fees as a risk premium.
Extension abandonment. Most major Magento 1 extensions are no longer maintained. The version installed in 2019 is the version still installed today. When the merchant’s stack interacts with extensions that are not getting updates, the security exposure compounds. Common pattern: a vulnerability discovered in a popular extension, the vendor declines to patch the Magento 1 version, the merchant either runs vulnerable code or removes the extension and loses the functionality.
PHP version pressure. PHP 7.4 reached end of life in November 2022. PHP 8.0 in November 2023. PHP 8.1 in November 2025. Magento 1 was not built to run on any of these versions. Third-party patches exist to make Magento 1 run on PHP 7.4 (and with much more effort, on PHP 8.x), but each requires careful integration and testing. Hosting providers are gradually deprecating older PHP versions.
Compliance regime evolution. Beyond PCI, other compliance regimes (SOC 2, ISO 27001, state-level data protection laws, the California Privacy Rights Act) increasingly require evidence of supported software and current patches. Merchants seeking enterprise contracts often face questionnaires that Magento 1 cannot answer cleanly.
Talent availability. Senior Magento 1 developers are increasingly rare. The talent pool has moved to Adobe Commerce, Shopify, or other platforms. Finding engineering help for Magento 1 in 2026 is harder than it was at EOL, and the developers who remain charge premium rates because the work is specialized and risky.
The third-party patch ecosystem
Several organizations have stepped in to provide third-party patches for Magento 1 since EOL. The most prominent are OpenMage LTS (a community-maintained fork of Magento 1) and commercial offerings from agencies like Mage One. These projects do meaningful work to keep the platform secure, but they have important limitations:
The patches are reactive. New vulnerabilities are patched after they are reported, often weeks behind the report. Merchants on third-party patches are protected from known vulnerabilities but exposed to new ones during the response window.
The compatibility surface is narrower. Third-party patches are tested against community-driven configurations. Merchants running unusual combinations of extensions or customizations may find that the patches do not apply cleanly.
The legitimacy question for compliance. PCI assessors and other auditors have variable acceptance of third-party patches as “current” for compliance purposes. Some accept them; others require official vendor support.
The patches do not address feature gaps. The third-party projects keep Magento 1 secure (to the extent possible); they do not add Hyvä-equivalent performance, modern API capabilities, or compatibility with current ecosystem tools.
For merchants who genuinely cannot migrate in the near term, the third-party patches are the responsible interim. They are not a long-term substitute for migration to Adobe Commerce.
The realistic options for a Magento 1 merchant in 2026
Three options have honest justifications. Most other options are forms of denial.
Option 1: Migrate to Adobe Commerce in 2026. The right answer for the strong majority of Magento 1 merchants. The migration is well-understood, the timeline is predictable, and the platform is supported. Budget and timeline as covered in other migration content from Bemeir.
Option 2: Migrate to a different platform. Some Magento 1 merchants are better served by Shopify Plus, BigCommerce, or another platform than by Adobe Commerce. The decision factors are mostly about business model fit: simpler B2C catalogs and lighter customization often fit Shopify Plus better than Adobe Commerce. Complex B2B, heavy customization, and large catalogs usually still fit Adobe Commerce better. Bemeir supports both paths and runs platform selection discoveries when the merchant is genuinely uncertain.
Option 3: Run on third-party patches with a firm migration deadline. This is the responsible interim for merchants who genuinely cannot start migration in the next 90 days. The pattern: install the third-party patches, maintain a defensible patch level, set a firm migration deadline within 12 months, and treat the migration as a board-level priority rather than an IT project.
The non-options:
“Wait until things get worse.” Things have already gotten worse. The exposure compounds every quarter. The wait is not safe.
“Run on patches indefinitely.” The third-party patch ecosystem is volunteer-driven and the level of effort is unpredictable. Building a long-term business plan around community-maintained patches of a discontinued product is not defensible.
“Hope the breach doesn’t happen.” Breaches of EOL Magento 1 stores happen routinely. Hope is not a strategy.
The cost-of-staying calculation
A useful way to make the decision concrete: model the cost of staying on Magento 1 for another 12 months vs. the cost of migrating now.
The cost of staying:
| Cost category | Annual cost range |
|---|---|
| Third-party patch maintenance and integration | $15K-$60K |
| Higher hosting costs (PHP version, configuration) | $5K-$25K incremental |
| Higher payment processing fees (risk premium) | 0.1-0.5% of GMV |
| Compliance complexity (additional audit work) | $10K-$40K |
| Slower roadmap delivery (talent scarcity) | Difficult to quantify, often 30-50% velocity loss |
| Breach risk (probability times impact) | Highly variable, typically $50K-$500K expected value |
For a $20M Magento 1 store, the annual cost of staying is typically $200K-$650K in direct and indirect costs, with the breach risk being the largest single component.
The cost of migrating: $300K-$700K one-time investment, depending on the store profile. After migration, the merchant is on a supported platform with predictable ongoing costs and meaningfully lower risk.
For most merchants in this revenue range, the cost of staying for another two years exceeds the cost of migrating in the first place. The math gets more obvious with each passing quarter.
What the migration looks like from Magento 1 specifically
A Magento 1 to Adobe Commerce migration has a few specific considerations distinct from a Magento 2.x to Adobe Commerce upgrade or a replatform from a different platform.
Data migration is more complex. Magento 1’s database schema differs more substantially from Adobe Commerce than Magento 2’s does. The data migration phase is heavier.
Extension porting is mandatory. Magento 1 extensions do not work on Adobe Commerce. Every extension needs to be replaced, rebuilt, or dropped. The compatibility audit is critical.
Theme rebuild is total. Magento 1 themes do not map to Adobe Commerce themes. The frontend is being built from scratch (usually on Hyvä, given the modern recommendation).
Customer expectations have shifted. A new Adobe Commerce store with Hyvä will feel meaningfully faster and more modern than the Magento 1 store it replaces. Customers will notice. The migration is also an opportunity to upgrade the customer experience meaningfully, not just to maintain it.
Integration ecosystem has evolved. Payment processors, shipping carriers, and ERP systems have all evolved since 2020. The Adobe Commerce integrations are often better than what Magento 1 supported. The migration is an opportunity to upgrade these integrations.
The typical Magento 1 to Adobe Commerce migration for a mid-market store runs 9-14 months and costs $300K-$700K, with the specific number determined by the store profile and the discovery.
What to do in the next 30 days if you are still on Magento 1
A reasonable urgent plan for any merchant still on the legacy platform:
This week: confirm the current patch level and PHP version. Install third-party patches if not already current. Brief leadership on the actual risk exposure.
This month: commission a compatibility audit and a migration scoping engagement. This is 2-3 weeks of professional services that produces the honest budget and timeline. Two or three serious agency conversations to validate the numbers and pick the right partner.
This quarter: sign the migration contract. Start discovery and architecture. The migration clock starts.
Within 12 months: be live on Adobe Commerce. The exact end date depends on the store profile, but every quarter of delay carries real cost.
Bemeir’s Magento team runs Magento 1 audit engagements as a focused two-week deliverable for merchants who need the honest assessment before they can start internal alignment on the migration. The output is the document that justifies the budget request internally and scopes the migration realistically. The migrations that work cleanly are the migrations that start with a real audit; the migrations that struggle are the ones that started with a sales conversation. The platform deserves serious treatment, and the merchants who give it serious treatment land their migrations cleanly. The merchants who keep waiting are the ones who eventually call us in crisis mode after a breach or a compliance failure. The path that does not involve crisis is the one that starts now.
